


Two AM Trips to 7/11

by kindarobots



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Slow Burn, help me, im gay, long talks in a 7/11 parking lot, theres a lack of content and i needed to fill the hole in my life, this is my first time writing a fanfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindarobots/pseuds/kindarobots
Summary: Jeremy watched him for a second before realizing he wasn’t getting back up any time soon and forced his own chair down. The passenger’s seat in this car was a little busted, meaning you didn’t push down a lever so much as wiggle yourself back until the old plastic finally cracked and let you swing down.Minutes passed in silence, punctuated by a song change or Michael slurping from his slushie. Jeremy couldn’t count how many times they’d ended up sitting without talking, doing absolutely nothing. It was a sign of a good friendship that you could just hang out and not say anything and it wasn’t awkward. Jeremy could count on one hand how many times he’d felt awkward around Michael.“Are you scared?” Michael finally asked after two more Marleys and one Radiohead.“I’m kinda scared all the time. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”Michael turned on his side to face Jeremy and pushed his glasses up his nose. “College.”Jeremy and Michael combat their senior year with college on the rise while obliviously dancing around the obvious feelings they choose to ignore.





	Two AM Trips to 7/11

**Author's Note:**

> someone help the formatting is hell on the eyes

The questions started at the end of junior year.

  
_Where are you going for college?_

  
Jeremy could manage to pass it off with an awkward shrug and a noise that resembled “I dunno” because awkward shrugs and “I dunno”s were kind of his thing. It stuck in his mind for a few minutes afterward, but he could shake off the nervousness with a shift in gaze towards Brooke and Chloe bickering or a good king-sized Snickers bar calling his name from the vending machine.

  
By the summer directly following The Squip Incident, the questions were getting a little more frequent. And probing.

  
_Where are you going for college? What do you want to major in? What’s your ACT score? Have you done any college visits?_

  
Jeremy would pull his shoulders to his ears, find an interesting crack in the ground, and say, “I haven’t thought that much about it”. Adults would give him a nervous laugh. His dad would nag him about getting onto those college websites. Fellow peers would either ramble off on their own college plans or chuckle and say, “Yo, me too, buddy.”

And now, at the beginning of his senior year, the questions were becoming unbearable.

  
_Where are you going fo-_

  
_What do you want to maj-_

  
_You haven’t even sta-_

  
_You’re a senior now! Shouldn’t you be-_

  
_My daughter is going to a school you mi-_

  
“Yeah. It’s pretty stressful,” Jeremy would respond.

  
Unless Michael was with him. Then Michael would say, “Not really sure!” and swing an arm around Jeremy’s neck. “We’re going there together, though.”

  
Michael was better with words than Jeremy could ever be.

  
Which was probably why he agreed to go with him to a 7/11 thirty minutes away at two in the morning on an empty tank of gas.

  
“You know how sometimes at night things don’t feel real? At all?” Jeremy asked as soon as Michael jumped back into the driver’s seat, large blue raspberry slushie in hand.

  
“Yeah, totally,” Michael responded and tossed the keys into the backseat.

  
“This is one of those times.”

  
“Yeah?”

  
“I’m ninety percent convinced we transcended to another plane of existence. This parking lot is unholy.”

  
“I’ve gotta take you to more 7/11’s, bro,” Michael laughed.

  
“So, what’s up?”

  
“What do you mean?”

  
“You usually don’t just take me to get slushies at two in the morning.”

  
“I don’t? Aw, dude, I should do it more often.”

  
“So, you’re okay?”

  
“Never been better. Want some tunes?”

  
A short finger reached out and jabbed the stereo, partially covered by the sleeve of an oversized red hoodie. Jeremy’s eyes skimmed from the sleeve onto the torso, on the lookout for any new patches that Michael may have picked up somewhere. He was always adding onto it. Some were already overlapping each other. Jeremy guessed that by the end of the year, Michael was going to be covered from head to toe in everything from political statements to Puerto Rican flags to marijuana leaves.

  
On came *NSYNC, interrupting Jeremy’s thoughts. Justin Timberlake sang his heart out to “Bye, Bye, Bye” over the boosted bass, cranked up to max if Jeremy could read Michael’s dash right.

  
Michael lip-synced along, way too enthusiastic, gesturing in an interpretive-dance-like fashion and throwing in some points Jeremy’s way, trying to get him to join in.

  
Jeremy could feel a smile break through the utter exhaustion coating his face as he started to bounce a little in his seat. There wasn’t a time in his life where Michael hadn’t been able to get Jeremy to dance. Even though Jeremy sucked at dancing. And kind of hated it. “What happened to Marley and Weezer?” he shouted over the music.

  
“I’m expanding my horizons!” Michael said and dumped some slushie down his throat. “*NSYNC is a classic!”

  
Jeremy barely heard his laugh over the buzz of bass in his ears.

  
Michael pinched his eyebrows together, puckered his lips and sang along just as Justin said, “bi, bi, bi,” making finger guns at Jeremy and jimmying his shoulders up and down. It earned him a smack on the shoulder.

  
“Really?” Jeremy said, grin still pulling on his lips. “All of that for a pun?”

  
Michael cackled, still mouthing the words through his fits of laughter.

  
“I’m straight as hell! Shut up!”

  
“Who said that Dwayne Johnson could rock them to sleep?”

  
“He’s a handsome man.”

  
“And if Chris Pine asked them to marry him, they would say yes in a heartbeat?”

  
“Did you _see_ him in Star Trek?”

  
Michael threw up his hands. “And I’m the gay one!”

  
“You are!”

  
“Yeah. You’re the bi one.”

  
Jeremy shoved Michael as he howled with laughter, strong outbursts of noise pushing his chest up and down, slushie swirling around in his hand. Like the fucking plague, it was. A nice plague. A plague full of rainbows.

  
“It’s too late for this,” Jeremy said and rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand.

  
Michael’s laughs finally subsided and disappeared behind the final vocals of “Bye, Bye, Bye,” the song morphing into Bob Marley’s steady beats. His hand reached down onto the side of his seat, cranking back a lever and letting his seat clatter backwards until he was staring at the roof of the car.

  
Jeremy watched him for a second before realizing he wasn’t getting back up any time soon and forced his own chair down. The passenger’s seat in this car was a little busted, meaning you didn’t push down a lever so much as wiggle yourself back until the old plastic finally cracked and let you swing down.

  
Minutes passed in silence, punctuated by a song change or Michael slurping from his slushie. Jeremy couldn’t count how many times they’d ended up sitting without talking, doing absolutely nothing. It was a sign of a good friendship that you could just hang out and not say anything and it wasn’t awkward. Jeremy could count on one hand how many times he’d felt awkward around Michael.

  
“Are you scared?” Michael finally asked after two more Marleys and one Radiohead.

  
“I’m kinda scared all the time. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

  
Michael turned on his side to face Jeremy and pushed his glasses up his nose. “College.”

  
Jeremy could feel his skin crawl at that two-syllable word. “I mean. Yeah.”

  
“I know we say that we’re gonna go to the same college and stuff but, like... What if we don’t? Ya know, like, what if we... Major in different things? Or if you get accepted into one and I don’t?”

“Shut up, dude. It’ll be fine.”

  
“But what if it’s not?” Michael ran a hand through his hair and turned back onto his back. “I don’t have... Friends, Jeremy.”

  
“Michael, I don’t either,” Jeremy laughed. “We’re equally losers, remember?”

  
“No, no, not true,” Michael said. “After the... The Thing, you’ve got Chloe, Brooke, Jake, Rich, Christine... That’s like a 5000% increase compared to me.”

  
“Your math might be a little off.”

  
“Whatever. Point is, you’re gonna be fine. I-I’m filled with anxiety and weed, I can’t— ”

  
Jeremy snorted at that, earning a smile from Michael.

  
“I can’t make friends like you can, dude!”

  
“You won’t have to! We’re going to college together.”

  
Michael paused. “Were you not listening to anything that I was saying?”

  
“I was! It’s just all bogus and we’re totally going to the same college.”

  
“Jeremy—”

  
“Michael. We’ll be fine. I swear. Nothing to worry about.”

  
“College aps are due next quarter.”

  
Jeremy swallowed. “Nothing to worry about. Promise.”

  
“Okay.”

  
“Is that why you drove me here?”

 

“I just want to spend as much time as possible with you. Just in case.”

  
Jeremy’s eyes twitched over to his best friend, who was still staring up at the roof of his car. There was a crack in the lining there from when Michael had played Jeremy a Bowie song that was just a little too bangin’ and Jeremy had bounced in his seat a little too hard and, well, he could still feel the snap of his teeth hitting each other.

  
“That’s gay,” he heard himself say.

  
Michael’s head shot around to glare at him, arms reaching towards him with malicious intent. The seat belt just barely contained him as Michael clawed against his binds like the Hulk’s gross green pecks mutilating that poor shirt. Jeremy laughed through his teeth.

  
“Fuck you, Jeremy Heere! I’m blasting Timberlake again!”

  
“Don’t, don’t, oh my god!”

  
Suddenly, something was hitting the driver’s window and Michael was bolting upright, glasses askew on his face and a deep red circle on his cheek from where his skin pressed into the leather chair.

  
“Hey!” the 7/11 employee said, palm still pressed against the glass. “You can’t sleep here! No loitering!”

  
“This is a 7/11 parking lot, I’m sure people have done worse things,” Michael mumbled and rubbed his knuckles over the raw skin on his face.

  
“What did you say?!” the girl said, ponytail bobbing as her neck swung from side to side. The only thing that Jeremy could think in his dazed, soporific stupor was that she looked like a cartoon snake from a children’s movie.

  
“Nothing! Nothing. Backing out, going home.” Michael let the PT Cruiser purr to life. It bucked a few times before finally rolling over multiple potholes and onto the pale, cracked road.  
The 7/11 girl saluted them as they left.

  
Jeremy glanced over to the stereo clock. 4:12 AM.

  
“Did we... Pass out in a 7/11 parking lot?”

  
“Yeah, totally, dude.”

  
“Oh god. We have school tomorrow.”

  
“Yep.”

  
“Dammit.”

  
“There’s an upside to this.”

  
“What’s the upside?”

  
“In approximately eight minutes, it’ll be 4:20.”

  
“I can’t fucking believe you, Michael Mell.”

  
“Snoop, take me home!”

  
Michael twisted the stereo’s dials to life, taking a moment before jabbing a button and bouncing his shoulders to the beat of a classic: “Smoke Weed Everyday” by the one and only Snoop Dogg. Snoop Lion? Whatever the man wanted to be called.

  
“Michael, take _me_ home. I need to sleep, dude. My grades are already bad enough as is.”

  
“Alright, alright,” Michael said and made a sharp turn to the right, shifting his Big Gulp slushie across the dashboard. It spat up some light blue sugar soup. “Sleep on the way there.”

  
“Yes, the calming sounds of Snoop Dogg rapping about marijuana.”

  
“I think it’s Snoop Lion.”

  
“Whatever, man,” Jeremy laughed and nudged his jaw into the headrest, letting his eyes fall closed. “Nighty night.”

  
“Sleep tight.”

  
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  
“Want to hangout after school?”

  
“Sure.”

  
“What about tomorrow?”

  
“Okay.”

  
“What’s your week looking like?”

  
“Michael.”

  
“College approaches.”

  
“Don’t worry about it.”

  
“Okay.”

  
“I’m sleeping now.”

  
“I’ll carry you up to your bed bridal style.”

  
“Sounds good.”

  
“Goodnight.”

  
“Good morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey this is my first fanfic so criticism would be appreciated  
> also i know like nothing happens in this first chapter sorry about that  
> it'll get gayer i promise


End file.
